Rail Bridge Dromantine Hill Newry Co Down BT35 6TG

Single-span, skewed, segmental-arched railway bridge over a road, built in 1850–51 to carry the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway. The bridge is located at the western end of Drumantine Hill, approximately 7.5 miles north of Newry, County Down, in a rural setting close to two other bridges: Gambles Railway Bridge to the immediate south and Gambles Road Bridge to the northwest.

The bridge is of a common type for its period. Despite its skewed brick soffit, it was assessed as having insufficient special interest to meet the criteria for listing and is recorded only.

West face: The spandrels are built in squared, random-coursed, rock-faced stone, with large cut-stone rock-faced voussoirs forming the arch. Sloping wing-walls extend to each side. The left-hand wing-wall has a concrete coping and a cement-rendered band below it, with a low stone pier abutting the wall at its northwest end. The right-hand wing-wall also has a concrete coping. A cut-stone string course sits above the segmental arch, with a cement-rendered parapet above that, topped by a replacement concrete coping and plain tubular metal railings. The east face mirrors the design and detailing of the west face. Beneath the arch, the pier walls are faced in coursed rock-faced granite. A stone string course runs below a row of skewed kneeler stones, above which the brickwork is laid in alignment with those kneeler stones. The soffit is of red brick laid in English Bond, with alternating header and stretcher courses following the skew. The bridge deck was not inspected at the time of survey.

Materials throughout are rock-faced granite, brick soffit, replacement concrete coping, and modern metal railings.

The bridge was built to carry the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway over a pre-existing road in Drumantine townland. The railway was authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1845, which incorporated the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway to construct a line between the existing termini at Drogheda, served by the Dublin and Drogheda Railway, and Portadown, served by the Ulster Railway, passing to the west of Newry and thereby completing a through route between Dublin and Belfast. Construction began at Drogheda and had reached Killeen, to the south of Newry, by July 1850. A separate push south from Portadown to Goraghwood was carried out between 1850 and 1851, during which period this bridge was built.

The line between Drogheda and Portadown was divided into six separate construction contracts, with different contractors employed on each section. The Portadown to Goraghwood section — Contract No. 6 — was awarded to William Dargan (1799–1867), a Carlow-born building contractor and railway entrepreneur who had trained under Thomas Telford and was responsible for a wide range of roads, railways, canals and docks across Ireland and Britain. Dargan had won the contract to build Ireland's first railway, the Dublin and Kingstown line, in 1834, and his success on that project enabled him to secure a substantial share of Irish railway construction work throughout the 1840s and 1850s.

The engineer-in-chief to the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway was Sir John Macneill, born in County Louth, also a former pupil of Thomas Telford. Macneill had worked in England and Scotland before being recruited in the late 1830s by the Irish Railway Commissioners to survey and plan the railway network in the north of Ireland. He subsequently served as chief engineer to numerous Irish railways, including the Dundalk and Enniskillen Railway, the Belfast and County Down Railway, the Downpatrick, Dundrum and Newcastle Railway, and the Belfast Central Railway, and received a knighthood following his work on the Dublin to Drogheda line. He was Professor of Civil Engineering at Trinity College, Dublin from 1842 to 1852. Among his other notable engineering works, he designed a bridge over the Royal Canal that was the first iron lattice bridge in the United Kingdom. On the Dublin and Belfast Junction line itself, Macneill was responsible for designing the Craigmore Viaduct, the Egyptian Arch, and the Boyne Viaduct, as well as numerous other railway bridges and viaducts, including several timber viaducts with masonry abutments built for the Dublin and Drogheda Railway. The responsibility for designing the bridges on the line, including this one, fell to Macneill and his assistant James Barton, though contributions may also have been made by other resident engineers.

James Barton (1826–1913) served as District Engineer for the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway. He had been a student of Macneill's at Trinity College and was brought in as a deputy after Macneill's other commitments — particularly on the Great Southern and Western Railway between Dublin and Cork — had led to neglect of his duties to the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway Board. Barton made significant contributions to the design of the Boyne Viaduct, alongside resident engineers Alexander Schaw and William Powell, though the precise relative contributions of the engineers involved were a matter of controversy in the years after the viaduct opened. Barton later became a consultant to numerous railway companies, principally in the north of Ireland, and his obituary described him as "one of the pioneers of Irish Railway construction and development." A resident engineer on the line, William Powell, exhibited a ground plan of the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway, with elevations of the principal bridges, viaducts, and related structures, at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1852.

In August 1850, Macneill reported to the Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway Company on progress with the sixteen miles of line from Goraghwood to Portadown under Dargan's contract, noting that the bridges were in a forward state, with five nearly completed except for their parapets and three others well advanced. A year later, in August 1851, he reported that all bridges between Craigmore and Portadown — with the exception of one over the Cusher River — had been completed. The section of railway between Mullaghglass, to the south of Goraghwood, and Portadown opened to the public on 6 January 1852. The full line from Drogheda to Portadown did not open until June 1852, following completion of the Craigmore Viaduct, and it was not until June 1853 that the first passenger train crossed the Boyne Viaduct, completing the through route between Dublin and Belfast. The Boyne Viaduct had initially been opened with a temporary wooden structure to carry trains, with the permanent structure completed in April 1855.

The bridge appears for the first time on the second edition of the six-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1860, captioned "Drumantine Bridge," though it is not captioned on later editions. The Dublin and Belfast Junction Railway was amalgamated into the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) in 1876 and was ultimately taken over by Northern Ireland Railways, a publicly owned operator, in the 1960s.